Shannon Davis receives mentoring award from SSSP

by Anne Reynolds

"In my mind, mentoring is a key to learning," says Shannon Davis, faculty member in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. "The relationship between the mentor and mentee, as well as betweenmentees, brings home an understanding that every relationship is an opportunity for discovery."

Davis's championing of the mentoring process, paired with the extent to which mentoring informs her own teaching, was recently recognized by the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP), in the form of the Kathleen S. Lowney Mentoring Award for 2018.

The award highlights the importance of mentoring relationships for both the mentor and the mentee, as they promote a greater sensitivity and understanding of the intricacies of social life, foster awareness of institutional inequalities and strategies for overcoming them, and advance social research and/or social activism that is “problem centered,” that is, carried out with a particular objective driving the research.

The SSSP, founded in 1951, is an interdisciplinary community of scholars, practitioners, policy-makers, social activists, and students engaged in research that relates to serious examination of the causes and consequences of significant social problems. It awards the Mentoring Award annually to an outstanding faculty member or community activist. Davis will accept the award at the SSSP annual meeting, to be held in August in Philadelphia.